‘Hurry away… run off… I’ve always done that, Nettie. I’ve wrapped my emotions up in a nice smart pinstripe suit and then walked away from them. Well, I’m not doing it any longer.’
‘But Dan needs you, Lucy! You’re a great team!’
‘That’s what we kept telling each other. We told each other that over and over again until we believed it. But all I know is that I’m a different woman from the woman I’ve been pretending to be’
‘Lucy!’
Lucy and Nettie span round. They hadn’t heard anyone approaching.
‘Lucy! The Starship’s about to take off for Earth!’ It was The Journalist shouting from the breakwater. ‘We’ve only got a few minutes to make it!’
‘We?’ murmured Lucy.
‘Of course!’ exclaimed The Journalist. ‘You don’t think I’d let you go back on your own… Not now you’ve said you’ll marry me!’
‘But,.. The! I’ll stay with you here if you want me to!’ Lucy had run up to him and was kissing him.
‘Uh-uh!’ said The Journalist. ‘I’ve got to see this thing through to the end!’
And suddenly the three of them were racing along the sands towards the space-port.
26
The journey back to earth in the Starship Titanic was pretty uneventful for the first hundred and seventeen million million miles. The Doorbots were just as snooty as they always had been, but since Lucy, Nettie, Dan and The Journalist were travelling First Class (VIP Status) all the other bots were unbelievably obsequious to them. The Liftbots gave Dan a surprising account of the Dunkirk evacuation which made it sound like a great victory for the Allied Forces, and the Deskbot asked for Nettie’s autograph (nobody was quite sure why until they overheard the Deskbot whisper to one of the Doorbots: ‘That’s Gloria Stanley, the actress, you know!’). But otherwise routine life on board the Starship ticked over.
Captain Bolfass put a brave face on his hopeless passion for Nettie. And yet, as he told his wife, it had at least given some purpose to his old age – even if that purpose were just to get over it.
Nettie for her part was mainly concerned for Dan. He seemed to be raking his separation from Lucy and her wild affair with The Journalist rather badly. He mostly kept to his cabin, and when he ate with them he was generally silent and morose.
‘Poor Dan!’ Nettie thought to herself. ‘He must be going through hell; after all, he and Lucy have been so close for all those years, and now to see her so besotted with another man – and an alien at that!’
Lucy and The Journalist also mostly kept to their cabin, but judging from the sounds emanating from behind their closed door, they were not brooding about anything. It sounded as if they might have been playing polo, or doing a bit of water-skiing all mixed in with some pretty serious weight-lifting. All in all it was lucky the state rooms on either side were empty. Even as it was, several pictures fell off the adjoining walls and a stand bearing a pot of Yassaccan lilies mysteriously toppled over.
On the third day the great Starship moved into the region of space beyond Proxima Centauri.
‘We should locate your star any minute – what d’you call it?’ asked Captain Bolfass.
‘The Sun,’ said Nettie.
‘What a beautiful name,’ said the gallant Captain, gazing at Nettie’s exquisite profile.
Nettie nodded. ‘It’s a beautiful thing.’
‘Hmmm,’ agreed the Captain dreamily.
‘Do you recognize any of the star patterns yet?’ asked the Navigational Officer anxiously. It was all very well heading for an unknown destination with such scanty data… but in this case they were all on board a ship that was destined to explode within two days time! The whole venture was crazy, as far as he was concerned, and he had expressed his opinion quite forcibly to Captain Bolfass. Supposing they failed to find the Earth – would they ever find anywhere to land in this remote armpit of the Galaxy? And even if they did, once the Starship had exploded, they would be marooned for well goodness knows how long it would take a rescue fleet to arrive.